tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jun 24 12:17:27 2002

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Re: yajmeH



qon Qov:
>I have seen this misapprehension before, from a native French speaker who 
>was fluent in English, but persisted in constructing English sentences that 
>were too long.

This is a good point. I'm glad you brought it up. It is a reminder that good 
composition does not necessarily follow from good grammar. We've spent so 
many years trying to determine what's good Klingon grammar, now that we have 
arrived at trying to determine what's good Klingon composition, it's quite 
fulfilling -- to me at least.

qon charghwI':
>Remember than the Empiror determines the current dialect. Similarly, I'm 
sure 
>that he determines issues such as this. As such, Okrand has essentially 
become 
>our de facto empiror of the language. I ran into this recently when I 
>remembered Okrand suggesting a functional limit to the comparative 
construction 
>at one time, then exceeding that limit in canon later.

Hmmm. Veeeery interesting. :) This is true in an important sense. I wouldn't 
have liked hearing this a few years ago, because I didn't trust Okrand then. 
I feared he didn't care enough to remember his own rules and that he'd be 
backfitting until the language was a mess. But the language is in fairly good 
health now.

-- 
Andrew Strader



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